- A fundamental component of connecting to Microsoft Azureis selecting the Azure subscription.Now, there are several subscription modelsthat you can select from,we'll talk about those in a few seconds.Now, in order to identify the best subscription modelbased on your usage you need to be able to evaluatewhat your cost will be of implementing an Azure environmentfor your organization.Now, in order to evaluate those costsMicrosoft has provided the Azure Calculator.

Now, the Azure Calculator gives you the abilityto put in information or variables about your environment,estimate based on those variableswhat your monthly usage cost of Azure would be.So you can define the numberof applications you'll be using,the number of virtual machines,the type of mobile applications you'll deploy,or platforms that you'll use for your custom applications,or the amount of storage as well that you'll put into Azure.All the Azure services can be evaluatedby using the calculator,you can either click on the various componentsand then evaluate based on component,or you can click on the full calculatorand then scroll through the multitude of Azure servicesand evaluate their cost based on the usage that you'll take.

Now, I'll use one of those as an example,which is the Virtual Machine Calculator.Now, for the Virtual Machine Calculatoryou can define the amountof virtual machines that you'll have,so there's a slider bar here that willdefine the amount of virtual machinesthat I'll deploy to Azure.As well you can specify the type of hardwarethat those virtual machines will be using,so these will be of course emulated hardwareor hypervisor-based hardware emulation,but you will be able to definethe amount of resources that are allocatedto those virtual machines.

So I can specify, for example,an A1-type virtual machine which increasesthe amount of RAM available.If I go all the way up to A4 I've got additional coresand RAM that are available to those virtual machines.Now, notice that I have two pricing tiers to select from,Basic and Standard.If I select Standard I have additional typesof virtual machines that are available to me,and you'll notice that these are much more advancedthan the A series available below.So if I go all the way up to a D14 seriesthat's a machine that has 16 cores, 112 Gigabytes of RAM,and a 800-Gigabyte SSD dedicated to it.

Now, if I just move on my scroller you'll note that the costof those virtual machines is going to be quite high,these are gonna be for much higher demanding machinesthat have a greater need for I/O resources.Now, for my needs here a basic will be enoughand I can pick an A1 virtual machineand slide over to one virtual machine,and here I have my cost.Now, notice that this is a monthly costand this is a per hour cost,so roughly seven pennies per hour.

Note that only the virtual machinesthat are started or stopped are going to be charged.In order to stop charging a virtual machinewe have a function to it that we can specifywhich is called "deallocated",and we'll look at that in a later videowhen we're looking at virtual machines.Now I can specify Windows virtual machinesor Linux virtual machines,reason for that is that the Linux virtual machinesare slightly less expensivebecause there's no Windows license associated.I can have a virtual machinethat's already running SQL Server,again those ones will be a little bit more expensivebecause they're running licensing of SQL Server as well.

Biztalk, Oracle software,various types of pre-installed operating systemand applications on it.Then I can also specify my bandwidth utilization.Now, notice that egress is the only thingthat you're charged for in Azure,so any incoming calls into Azure,those are not charged,so ingress is not charged,egress or any data going from Azure to your networkor from Azure to your users,that is the bandwidth that is being charged in Azure.

And going down to the bottom hereI selected one machineand it shows here that my evaluated cost from monthis $55 dollars.Now, this is if I select a Pay-as-you-go subscription plan,as I mentioned earlier there's several typesof subscription plan that I can choose from.The Pay-as-you-go subscrition modelis really for organizations that are evaluating their usageand want to really get an idea of what type of planthey're gonna go into for Azure,and they're not ready to moveall their resources to Azure just yet,they want to move some resources and pay based on need.

So the Pay-as-you-go plan is really the simplest one.However, for large organizationsor organizations that have decidedto make a full move to Azurewe can have an enterprise agreement.Now, the enterprise agreement,if I click here on my enterprise agreement for Azure,is only purchased through resellers,so either a partner reselleror directly from Microsoft reseller.Enterprise agreements are really for organizationsthat will specify a dedicated amount of moneythat they are committing to spending on a monthly basis,and if they exceed over that monthly amountthen they will be charged over and above the amountthat they've committed for.

Now, this is again for organizationsthat have fully committed to Azure,if you're not sure yet you wanna havea free subscription to Azureso you can truly evaluate it and see if it's going to besomething valuable for your organization.Well, one thing that you can do is perform a free trial.Now, the free trial is really for individualsthat are evaluating for themselves, for learning purpose,or for their company.If you do a free trial you will have a set period of trialwith a $200 credit to Azure.Now, as you noted everything in Azureis specified by dollars spent,and the free trial gives you $200 of credits which should bemore than enough for you to test your applicationsand the uses of Azure.

If you have an MSDN subscription you will as wellhave access to $120 a month of Azure credits.Partners as well have free access to Azurewhere they're provided with a certain amount of credits.Now, note that these amounts are constantly changingand everything in Azure is constantly changing,and therefore this information might be slightly differentby the time you watch this video.If you want to evaluate how much money you've already usedmaybe as part of your free trialor as part of your MSDN subscription,you can easily go into one of the Azure portals,click on the billing optionsand from the billing options you get to lookat how much money you have left.

Now, note that my account is in Canadaso it's listed in Canadian dollars,and I have $38.32 left on my monthly billingwith about four days left of subscriptionuntil my $120 credit will start again overfor my Visual Studio subscription that I have right now.Now, note that if I click on the blades in this interface,I can click here on Visual Studio Premium,and note that I can identifythe burn rate of my subscriptionexactly to see how much money I'm spending on a daily basis.

This is great to identify a spike in usage,so if I had one day where I hada lot of access for an application,or if I had a lot of uses of my virtual machinesI would see a spike here and I would seethat amount decreasing in a sharp graph.However, here I have a slope that is really standardand therefore I'm just burning at a regular ratethe amount of credits in my subscription.If I go a little bit below hereI can also look at the usage based on specific application,so based on a specific resource such as a web appor virtual machines, I can click on each one of thoseand see what percentage of my subscriptionis being spent for a specific resource.

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Released

6/30/2015

Get an IT administrator's view of Microsoft's cloud offering, Microsoft Azure. David Elfassy provides an inside look at working with Azure cloud-based storage and networking services, which can scale up or down as your organization changes. He'll show you how to manage your Azure account, configure options via portals or PowerShell scripting, and set up services successfully, including web apps, virtual machines, Active Directory, and VPNs. The final chapter makes the business case for Azure, and shows you how to implement backups to make sure your data is safe on premise and in the cloud.